Deep in a Dutchess Fen

ENLARGE

Researchers looking for bog turtles in Dutchess County last Friday.
Mae Ryan for The Wall Street Journal

By

Ralph Gardner Jr.

Updated May 10, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET

I realize animals aren't for everyone. After last week's owl column, I got an email from my cousin telling me I could keep them. But for those who love turtles (and who can resist), I would like to think that what follows has something for everyone—adventure, poachers, invasive species and a happy ending. Besides, I got up at the crack of dawn on what's supposed to be my day off to report the story. So give me a break.

The turtle in question is the smallest in North America, the bog turtle, which I'd frankly never heard of before the Wildlife Conservation Society—the people who run the city's zoos—asked me to join them on an expedition upstate to assess the health of a population. The turtles are listed as "threatened" by the federal government and "endangered" by New York state, even though there are no reliable estimates of what the population is.

"In 2009, the Fish and Wildlife Service put out a bulletin in response to biologists reporting having found turtles with skin lesions, and dead turtles at a higher rate than normally observed," explained
Dr. Bonnie Raphael,
the WCS's department head of wildlife medicine, who has studied turtles from the American West to Madagascar. "We can't say it's a die-off. There may be some disease process going on that is affecting the well-being of the animals."

The purpose of the trip was to assess the turtles' health, determine what, if anything, is stressing them—the primary suspects seemed to be loss of habitat and invasive species—and ultimately to come up with a plan to protect them.

ENLARGE

The turtles are being tracked to measure the population's health.
Mae Ryan for The Wall Street Journal

Why it's hard to peg their population, which is found from New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut down to Tennessee and Georgia, became apparent when we tried to find them, but more about that in a moment. First we had to report at 6:30 a.m. to the Bronx Zoo, where the WCS's global health team would be assembling. Why so early I'm still not sure I understand. But I considered it a privilege on a beautiful spring morning to walk through the still-sleeping zoo, past the birds-of-prey area—golden and bald eagles, condors and a snowy owl who examined us as if we had a screw loose.

After loading a couple of vans with equipment and making a pit stop at Dunkin' Donuts for a dozen assorted doughnuts and a trough-size receptacle of coffee, we were on way up the Hutchinson River Parkway. Apparently, so attractive are bog turtles to poachers—even though no one has reliable numbers for how many are collected for the pet trade—that I'm not allowed to say where we went, except that it was somewhere in Dutchess County.

Before we go any further—especially if I end up doing anything to infuriate the valiant souls trying to save the reptiles, such as inadvertently giving away the location—I just want to say how much I like turtles. I wrote a piece on a pampered Fifth Avenue turtle, Skipperdee, a few months back, but I don't think you can overpraise them. Simply put, they seem to know the score. There's very little wasted energy. They live forever, or almost. No one knows for sure the life expectancy of bog turtles, but even though they grow to a maximum length of only four-and-a-half inches, estimates are that they may live as long as 30 or 40 years.

I was told of a bog turtle first tracked in 1985, when she was at least 12 years old, that was tracked again in the late '90s and most recently in 2009, making her between 30 and 40 years old. "She's been hanging out with a male much younger than she," reported
Alison Whitlock,
an endangered-species expert with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

And just in case I haven't already overwhelmed you with enough bog turtle-related trivia, here's more: Bog turtles don't actually live in bogs. They live in fens. What's the difference between a bog and a fen? I haven't the vaguest idea. However, I now know what a fen is, because I spent the better part of Friday morning slogging through one. It's a soggy meadow dominated by mosses and plants such as skunk cabbage and Purple loosestrife. And elusive as bog turtles can be, this is apparently the best time of year to spot them—after they've come out of hibernation but before they start breeding (the last thing anyone wanting to do is interfere with their romantic lives and add another stressor).

ENLARGE

Bog turtles are attractive to poachers.
Mae Ryan for The Wall Street Journal

Once we'd reached our destination, we were joined by representatives from the USFWS, the Nature Conservancy, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and volunteers such as
Kevin Shoemaker,
a biologist who had done a survey of the two-and-a-half-acre fen and reported a population of approximately 50 turtles.

More to the point, he knew how to find them. Which wasn't easy, since they're usually partially buried in the mud when they're not "basking," in other words tanning, which none of them were. Mr. Shoemaker probed with a stick the hummocks where they hang out and found the morning's first bog turtle that way. But the rest of them—11 in all, including two juveniles, in a three-hour period—were located by getting on one's knees and groping in the mud.

It's easy to see why they'd be attractive to poachers and why international trade in the species is banned. They're handsome little critters with dark-brown shells and a distinctive orange mark on either side of their head.

Those that were found were brought over to Ms. Rafael's makeshift field hospital, where they were given all manner of tests to gauge their health: their mouths and rectums were swabbed, a nasal flush was administered and blood was taken. And after suffering that indignity, they were handed over to
Suzanne Macey,
a Fordham University Ph.D. student who weighed and measured them and outfitted several with transmitters.

The irony was that to protect the creatures we seemed to be interrupting their routines as rudely as any poachers. Hopefully, turtles have short memories. And it was for a good cause. (Bog turtles don't travel much—"high site fidelity" is how Mr. Shoemaker put it—and most had identification notches on their shells made by previous researchers.)

The good news is that the population at this particular fen seemed in generally excellent health. "Did you try to bite me?" Ms. Raphael demanded of one of her patients. "That's a good thing. I like it when they're feisty. It means we haven't stressed them too much."

The Wildlife Conservation Society held an expedition to Dutchess County to assess the bog turtle population on Friday, May 6. A photo caption on an earlier version of this story gave an incorrect date. The turtles are tracked by notches filed into their shells. An earlier version of this story incorrectly said the turtles were tagged.

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